Last year I purchased a Oscar hull in 1/96 from Scale ship in the Ukraine and the mood has struck me to get started. But...But Mark you havent finished the mighty Seaview yet! Tisk .Tisk. Itll all happen. Sooo here we go!
Isnt it cool

What a hunk.
Actually there are several people offering an Oscar hull in 1/96. Most notably is Kevin Mcleod from Canada. I was very impressed with his build on it. To be able to make one of these from scratch to me is a whole different ballgame from just putting a kit together. The main problem was me. I couldnt touch ,feel and smell his hull as he lives in Canada, but a friend of mine , fellow Subcomdeepsouth member Dave Santivanez from Ocala already had one of the Scale Ship Oscars. So, after closely examining his, I waited for it to go on sale(free shipping) sold a whole bunch of stuff on Ebay,and then duly ordered it.

I was quite impressed with the detail and quality that was evident in it.

Last edited by greenman407 on Thu Jan 01, 2009 11:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

There are OLD pilots and there are BOLD pilots but there are very few OLD BOLD pilots. MAG

The fiber glass is thinner than most Rc subs and it will be interesting to see how you reinforce the hull to iliminate the flexing and alighnement of the 2 halfs.

I havent started on mine yet due to other subs that I wanted to build first but I know that I will have the same challanges as you will encounter soon.
I might go with more FG layup and or ribbing and of course my casing will be used.

Any way she is a bute and a high quality model .

Happy New Year

Dave Amur Ship Yard

"I like submarine comanders ,they don't have time for bull!!" and
"Don't tell me it can't be done!"

Thanks Dave. My plans are to reinforce the hull with stiffeners and gussets. It will have operating bow planes although they will be fixed and will not retract. However to keep them from being damaged I will make them easy to remove. Because weight will not be a problem I will use ten cells(nimh) in a battery WTC in the nose. The bow planes will be operated by a waterproof servo , the same as will be installed soon in the SEAVIEW. I have already purchased everything that I will need to build it with the exception of the APC which will be a Caswell/Mcleod apc/failsafe. Ive already installed one in the Albacore and it works quite well. Some details have yet to be worked out but its going to happen. seeya

There are OLD pilots and there are BOLD pilots but there are very few OLD BOLD pilots. MAG

And now for a gigantic ,to scale drawing of the beast. My two sons Nathan on the left and Zachary on the right are doing the honors. They find there dads hobby amusing and interesting but it cannot compete with video games and skate boarding.

There are OLD pilots and there are BOLD pilots but there are very few OLD BOLD pilots. MAG

I would be remiss if I did not also steer you in the direction of another manufacturer of 1/96 Oscars, Kevin Mcleod. His post to the Subcommittee was most informative and impressive. It is my belief that you could absolutely not go wrong if you purchased one of his hulls

Now back to the business of hull construction. After consultation with a few old hands out there in model submarine land it was felt that the best way to proceed with the hull fitting was to make a Z cut. That is to cut the bottom hull off at the nose and attach it directly to the top hull. But first I needed to mark the hull accurately.
If you will notice I made the cut 1/8" behind one of the sonar windows. It was a good guide to help me mark the line. A flexable metal ruler was also used to conform to the hulls curves during the marking job.

Using an 1/8 long drill bit left over from the Seaview construction effort I ground down the dull end to a point on the bench grinder and employed it as a tool for marking the hull for the cut. Then taking a X-acto razor saw I went to work.

The results were quite good. I am a Dremel man from way back but it would not make a perfect cut and besides the kerf or cut would remove too much material.

It did however , dull my razor saw. Oh well , it did the job that I bought it for.

And Wallah! This is ofcourse upside down.

There are OLD pilots and there are BOLD pilots but there are very few OLD BOLD pilots. MAG

So now on to the task of permanantely attaching the bottom piece( that was just cut) to the top hull. As you can see the flanges will make a nice little trough for holding the epoxy at the joint. But first lets get out the 150 grit wet or dry sandpaper and rough up the areas that the epoxy needs to adhere to.

After running a 2" wide piece of masking tape on the outside of the hull to protect from bleed through I used fiberglass cloth cut into little strips as a strengthening agent for the 30 min. epoxy that I carefully poured into the joint. Then applying the saturated strips(with epoxy) it helped hold the epoxy from running out. I did this ofcourse in several installments and used gravity(position of hull)to keep epoxy from running all over the place. Let each instalment of epoxy and cloth dry before proceeding with the next one.

There are OLD pilots and there are BOLD pilots but there are very few OLD BOLD pilots. MAG

I did of course tack the pieces in place first with Ca. Attention had to be paid to properly alighning the hull surfaces to each other before glueing. This has to be done a little at a time otherwise all the surfaces wont line up well as the hull is quite flexable.

As you can see there were some gaps that could not be closed all the way. Once the epoxy is poured all of these will be filled.

There are OLD pilots and there are BOLD pilots but there are very few OLD BOLD pilots. MAG

Sorry to interupt but I thought that I should at some point insert some info on the WTC. And here it is in all its glory. The venerable Caswell/Merriman 3.5" 2 shaft subdriver.

I think that it will do the job. I originally wanted to special order one with about a 6" longer ballast tank for more bouyancy. These Russian submarines had extremely high freeboard. If it worked out to be too long I could just trim off however much I needed to get the ballast tank volume down to where I needed it to be. It was not to be. Caswell told me that at that time Dave was loaded down too much already. So we will make due.

There are OLD pilots and there are BOLD pilots but there are very few OLD BOLD pilots. MAG